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ADDRESS 

DELIVERED AT THE 

FOURTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING 

OF THE 

National Assooiation of State Universities 

Held in Boston, October 8th-9th, 1909 



BY JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN, PRESIDENT OF 
THE ASSOCIATION 



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ADDRESS 

DELIVERED AT THE 

Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the 
National Association of State Universities 

Held in Boston, October 8th-9th, 1909 



BY JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN, PRESIDENT OF 
THE ASSOCIATION 



Some Problems of Our Universities — State and 

Endowed. 



The present meeting of the National Association of State 
Universities has been convoked at this unusual time and still 
more unusual place to enable its members to attend on the 
same occasion the formal ceremonies of inaugurating Dr. 
Lowell as President of Harvard University. The members of 
the Association will, I am sure, recognize that their officers have 
acted with propriety in paying this compliment to the pldest 
and most famous of American universities. 

The circumstances of the meeting naturally suggest a theme 
for your President's address. This is an association of State 
universities. Harvard is a privately endowed university, 
independent of State control. I propose, therefore, to consider 
some of the characteristics of state and privately endowed 
universities respectively and also some of the more urgent 
problems which press on them in common for solution at the 
present time. But there is a third group of universities— the 
denominational— about which something must be said at the 
outset. 



DENOMINATIONAL UNIVERSITIES. 

Denominational institutions owe their existence and in the 
main their continued support to the enthusiasm, energy, and 
benevolence of religious sects by which with varying degrees 
of scholastic independence they are all in the last resort regulated 
and controlled. But the supreme object of the denomination 
does not coincide with the supreme object of the university, 
whose province is knowledge and whose method is the free, 
unfettered, and unbiased search after truth. The pursuit of 
this method, as the history of the progress of science and 
philosophy all too painfully demonstrates, has constantly 
brought the university into collision with the church whenever 
a new vista of truth was opened up or the narrow horizon of 
human knowledge pushed back a little into the realm of the 
unknown. As a consequence there has developed a clear 
recognition of the fact that the university xannot, without 
abandoning its own constitutive idea, be subject to any control 
whatever from the side of the church. Absolute independence 
is the supreme condition of intellectual activity. A denomina- 
tional university, therefore, is, in a last analysis, a contra- 
diction in terms. It could never flourish among a people like 
the French who push all premises to their logical conclusions 
and feel unhappy if the last obscure residuum of a complex 
conception is not dragged out of its hiding place and exhibited 
to the clear light of day. This is what makes government so 
difficult in France; for government is largely a matter of 
compromises. We Americans, on the other hand, succeed in 
government because among other things we have a genius for 
compromise. The same genius follows us — sometimes for 
good, often for evil — into other domains of life; and it un- 
doubtedly accounts for the development amongst us of denom- 
inational universities, which early conditions in New England 
naturally called into existence. The denomination has supreme 
control over its university, but it has not pushed that control 



Ausho? 

tf^N 22 1912 



to the extreme limit. And the denominational university 
has responded to this attitude of toleration by moderating its 
zeal in the discovery or dissemination of new truths in fields 
which had already been pre-empted by the dogmas of the 
church. Of course, in a world of universal compensations, 
the parties to this compromise have had to pay for it. And 
the price paid b}^ the denominational university has been heavy 
enough. 

GOVERNMENT OF STATE UNIVERSITIES. 

The state supported universities are governed by boards 
of regents or curators or trustees, who are in some cases elected 
by the people and in others appointed by the governor of the 
state. I now proceed to inquire how this arrangement har- 
monizes with the idea of a university. 

No one would pretend that the governing board of a state 
university is committed to any dogmas like the articles of faith 
of a religious denomination. Yet there are possibilities of 
oppression or restriction for the university which must not be 
overlooked. The people may elect, or the governor appoint, 
regents (or trustees) not only who belong to a particular 
political party, but because they belong to it. They may be 
all republicans or all democrats, or all of some other political 
stripe. I do not know that such a thing has ever actually 
occurred in any of the many states which now have state 
universities and in most of them it would be impossible. But 
I make the extreme supposition in order that we may clearly 
realize the force of the objection I am endeavoring to describe. 
Here then is a board of regents made up wholly of men who 
belong to one political party and because they belong to it. 
How will the idea of the university fare in the hands of such 
political partisans? 

Before attempting to answer that question I must crave 
your indulgence while I describe another hypothetical situation. 
The university is not the only public institution supported by 



the state. There are many others, including, for example, 
hospitals for the sick and asylums for the insane. These 
institutions are also controlled and administered by boards of . 
managers, who are generally appointed by the governor of the 
state. Let us suppose now that the same practical considera- 
tions which led to the appointment of a republican or a 
democratic board of regents for the state university necessi- 
tated also the appointment of a republican or a democratic 
board of managers for the state insane asylum. How will 
these political partisans administer the trust and care for the 
unfortunate wards committed to them by the sovereign power 
of the state? 

To ask such a question is to answer it. These men will 
perform their public duties like any other American citizens 
who might have been selected to undertake them. With one 
exception, of which I shall have more to say in a moment, the 
fact that the managers are all of one political party will make 
no difference in their administration of the asylum. Whether 
of one political party or more, or of no political party, the 
managers in any event will desire to conduct the public business 
committed to them with reasonable efficiency and economy. 
And the members of the board, however constituted, would 
always feel that this is what the public expected of them. 
Even a board com.posed entirely of members of one political 
party would not consciously and deliberately defy or ignore 
that expectation. But such a board is always exposed to one 
temptation which cannot arise in a board differently con- 
stituted. A board wholly republican or wholly democratic 
is pretty sure to select such officers or employees as it appoints 
from its own political camp and perhaps on the recommenda- 
tions of political leaders; and the favoritism which leads to 
the appointment of such candidates is apt to protect them 
afterwards against the just and salutary penalties that should 
be inflicted for neglect of duty or incompetency in office. In 

6 



this way the administration of a state asylum may be seriously 
impaired, if the managers be entirely of one political party. 
And to some extent, this danger is imminent when a considerable 
majority of the managers are of the same political party. In 
the best administered asylums the danger is avoided by having 
all appointments in the hands of the superintendent and hold- 
ing him responsible for the results. 

DANGER OF POLITICS. 

This example enables us to measure the danger to which a 
state university may be exposed from a board of regents who 
are political partisans. The vital point is the matter of appoint- 
ments. If the board on its own motion makes appointments, 
they will be made on political grounds or on other grounds 
foreign to the life and spirit of the university, and the institution 
might as well close its doors. It has a name to live, but it is 
dead. On the other hand, if the board acts only on nominations 
made by the president, and if before making nominations the 
president (who if he thinks of anything but the merits of the 
candidates profanes his high office) also consults and advises 
with the dean and members of the faculty who profess cognate 
branches of learning, then it would seem to matter little whether 
the members of the board of regents were all men of one political 
party or of none. The faculty is the universit)^ And if its 
members are selected by their peers, and on the basis of ability 
and scholarly or scientific attainment and achievement, the 
life of the university goes on inviolate. 

Or, rather, it would go on inviolate, if this governing board 
of political partisans did not choose to interfere at another 
point, where interference is at any rate conceivable. Here 
the analogy with the administration of the state insane asylum 
does not help us. For the managers of an asylum, however 
intense their own political convictions and sentiments, cannot 
conduct a propagandist campaign or make converts among the 



insane. But a board of regents composed of political partisans 
might conceivably desire to use the university for such purposes. 
These ends are, however, so alien to the life and objects of the 
university that, as experience happily shows, even a partisan 
electorate would not tolerate the spectacle of such a shameful 
perversion of functions and aims. A board of regents which 
attempted it would be overwhelmed with obloquy and disgrace. 
A board of political partisans might, however, with more 
prospect of success, interfere with the teaching of some pro- 
fessor whose views were opposed to their own political dogmas. 
The members of a republican board might resent free-trade 
teachings; and a sympathetic exposition and defence of social- 
ism might bring down upon the head of the professor the 
objurgations of either republican or democratic regents. This 
danger is a very real and serious one in cases in which the 
members of the board reflect the views, sentiments, and 
prejudices of a large majority of the people of the state. A 
newspaper campaign is inaugurated (or, under the conditions, 
inaugurates itself) against the "heretical" professors, and they 
and their teachings are denounced from one end of the state 
to the other. When the legislature meets the matter is made a 
subject of legislative investigation. And it is inevitable that 
the fundamental relation between the university and the state 
should be thoroughly canvassed. At such a time legislators 
and voters too are likely to ask whether the state should vote 
public money, whether citizens should tax themselves to 
support an institution which is instilling into the minds of the 
picked young men and women of the rising generation ideas 
and theories utterly opposed to those which they and their 
fathers have long entertained and devoutly cherished and 
which they believe to be essential to the sound life of the body 
politic or even to the nobility of individual manhood. This is 
the supreme crisis for the state university. Freedom of thought, 
freedom of investigation, freedom of teaching, freedom of 



publication, — this is the soul of a university. And dictation 
from the state is just as much tyranny as dictation from" the 
church. Truth must judge itself; it cannot be determined by 
counting noses. One man with God is a majority. The 
professor must be left free to follow the dictates of reason and 
the demonstration of evidence even though his conclusions are 
at variance with the beliefs (or prejudices) which the mass of 
mankind regard as fundamental truth. And if a state uni- 
versity cannot ensure him that freedom, it is to that extent not a 
university at all. As in the denominational university the 
last word would be spoken not by the intellect but by some 
power outside it — by a board of trustees, by a legislature, or 
by a majority of the people of the state. 
THE SUPREME TEST. 
Like other institutions the state university is on trial. The 
supreme test is whether the people of the state will on the one hand 
tax themselves to support it and on the other impose upon them- 
selves a self-denying ordinance to leave it severely alone, so that 
it may select its own mevibers by the application of its own in- 
tellectual standards and the members thus chosen may be absolutely 
free to investigate, to teach, and to publish whatever they believe to 
be the truth. If our people do not already possess this conception 
of a university, they must be educated up to it. For a univer- 
sity cannot flourish on any other condition. I need scarcely 
point out that the general acceptance of this view would be 
greatly facilitated by the constant recollection on the part of 
the professors of the maxim that freedom implies obligation, 
and that in this instance the obligation imposed is that of self- 
restraint, along with the courtesy to be expected of gentlemen 
and that tact which mitigates or avoids the asperities of 
embarrassing circumstances. 

I have spoken hitherto of denominational and state uni- 
versities. I now turn to the endowed universities, which are 
supported and governed independently of church and state 
alike. 

9 



ENDOWED UNIVERSITIES. 

The advocates and supporters of this form of university 
organization are as a rule deeply impressed with the dis- 
advantages not only of denominational but also of state uni- 
versities. Confining attention to the latter they would 
emphasize the danger of "political" appointments and control, 
the consequent abridgement of professorial liberty and the 
lowering of the intellectual tone and vitality of the institution. 
The analysis I have already made shows that there is much 
exaggeration in these criticisms. And experience proves that 
as our states outgrow the perilous period of callow youth they 
quickly discover that their universities must be kept out of 
the sphere of practical politics. None of the larger state 
universities are today affected with that virus. In one or two 
state universities there have recently been political scandals, 
but these have been in new states which are making, as all new 
states do, that first, and apparently inevitable, attempt to 
treat the universities as political spoils. I venture to say, 
however, that the way the American public has treated this 
debauch is likely to prevent its recurrence even in those new 
states. For the rest I am persuaded that the state universities 
in general have little or no ground to apprehend political 
appointments or political control. The only real danger I 
see is the danger I have already described. Yet even this 
danger must not be exaggerated. For there is a good deal of 
evidence to show that the people will tax themselves to support 
their universities, even when those universities teach doctrines 
in economics, politics, sociology, biology, or philosophy, which 
the people may think subversive of the dearest interests of 
mankind, both in the life of the individual and the life of the 
family and of society and of the state. The people are on such 
occasions perplexed, they are dissatisfied, they are even 
irritated; but in the end they recognize that these matters 
must be left to the experts, and that, as truth is of God, it is 

10 



vain on the one hand to defy it and foolish on the other to 
fear it can be overcome with error. 

It cannot be denied, however, that a university with a 
private endowment is in this respect in a better position than a 
university which Hves on annual legislative appropriations. 
Whatever its professors teach or publish, the university has no 
occasion to apprehend the revenge of an outraged public in 
the form of diminished revenues. Its funds are invested, and 
the rate of interest is not affected by the discoveries or publica- 
tions of its professors. Be their views in economics or 
philosophy orthodox or heretical, the returns from investments 
in stocks, bonds, or mortgages are neither augmented nor 
diminished. And the advantage of owning funds, which by 
prudent investment produce an annual revenue that may be 
assuredly counted on in any contingency, is one that cannot 
easily be exaggerated. There is a feeling of absolute security 
which I suppose can scarcely ever exist in a state university 
though there is an approximation to it in the case of state 
universities when a legislative appropriation has been long 
established or when under the state constitution the university 
receives a fixed proportion of the revenues of the state. 

INFLUENCE OF DONORS. 
Is an endowed university, however, under any less temptation 
to truckle to public opinion than a state university? It is 
true that an endowed university has its annual income assured 
for the present, while a state university might have its income 
reduced by an irate legislature backed by an outraged public 
opinion. But universities are constantly growing, and they 
need more material support. The independent university 
must trust to the benevolence of men and women of means and 
philanthropic impulses. If the managers of state universities 
must take account of the sentiments of legislators and voters, 
are not the trustees of endowed universities under temptation 
to consult the feelings and prejudices of millionaires and 

11 



philanthropists? Is not the situation really identical for both 
classes of universities? They need and must have financial 
support from outside sources ; yet neither directly nor indirectly 
must these holders of the purse strings influence the work and 
life, the teaching and investigation of those specialists who are 
set apart for the discovery and communication of truth. From 
one point of view indeed it might be said that the case was a 
little worse for the endowed universities. They depend on 
the charity of a certain small class of the community — the rich 
and generous. But the state universities are supported from 
the contributions made to the public treasury by all the citizens 
and residents of the state. From this difference has arisen the 
suspicion in certain quarters — especially I think among the 
laboring classes — that the privately endowed universities are 
the creatures and organs of capital. The aspersion is as cruel 
as it is unjust. Nothing could be more unfortunate for an 
institution consecrated to knowledge and truth than the 
suspicion that its work was not wholly disinterested, its in- 
vestigations not absolutely unbiased, its teachings not purely 
the rational extraction of fact and evidence. Yet baseless as 
this accusation must in the main be pronounced to be, an 
appearance of subservience to capitalistic interests can always 
be plausibly made out against universities which derive from 
that source the means for their material support or expansion. 
Because the privately endowed universities live on the gifts 
which the rich or well-to-do bestow upon them, it is easy for 
the unreflecting and especially for the prejudiced to charge 
that they serve their benefactors even at the expense of truth 
and honesty. The one conclusive reply is an appeal to facts, 
an appeal to the history of endowed colleges and universities 
which have been in existence for generations and centuries. 
Whatever possibilities of danger may lie in their organization 
and especially in their mode of support, that history conclusively 
demonstrates that the privately endowed university has not 

12 



bartered the holy spirit of truth for gifts and legacies of money. 
They have not fought against the tyranny of church and state 
to sell themseles in slavery to Mammon. 

I have, however, already indicated the danger to which the 
privately endowed universities are exposed. As the state 
universities are tempted to concihate public opinion, which 
controls legislative appropriations so the privately endowed 
universities, which are ambitious to expand and develop, are 
tempted to attract the favorable attention of the wealthy 
classes to whom they look for endowment. In both cases the 
end may be accomplished by means which are honorable and 
dignified. But in both cases also there are possibiHties of an 
opposite kind. To the best of my knowledge and beHef , however, 
the presidents and responsible managers of our best known 
endowed universities (and it is these only I am now considering) 
seek support for their institutions by striving to m^ake them 
efficient and realizing the intellectual leadership which is their 
true vocation. No other course is open to honorable and self- 
respecting gentlemen and scholars. And such a course — the 
true course for every university to follow — may appeal to men 
of wealth who are seeking philanthropic investments for 
capital more effectively than impassioned defenses of corpora- 
tions or fierce attacks on radicals or any other blatant champion- 
ship of vested interests and the rights of property. Rich men 
know that a university is an organ of the intellectual life. And 
most of those who use their money for educational purposes 
are large-minded enough to support universities which are 
devotedly fulfilling that function, whether they like or dislike 
the teachings of this, that, or the other individual professor. 

The direct influence of benefactors on the administration and 
control of our universities has not been large. They have as a 
rule made their gifts and gone their way, leaving the administra- 
tion of their funds in the hands of the institution. This fact 
should be carefulh' considered by those critics who assert that 

13 



the privately endowed universities are controlled by capital. 
The one conspicuous exception to this rule is the practice of 
founders of colleges and universities. They are apt to regard 
the institutions they have established as their own personal 
property. And during their life- time, as very recent examples 
remind us, these institutions may lack the freedom and 
independence which are essential to the life of a genuine uni- 
versity. Going back a generation I may say that no university 
founder ever interfered less with the institution he established 
than Ezra Cornell. Yet Gold win Smith, who came to the new 
university, fresh from Oxford, was moved to observe that the 
proper place for college founders was in marble efhgy in the 
college chapel! 

CORPORATIONS AS ALMONERS. 

Benefactors die; universities abide. At least that has been 
the case in the past. But in this age of organization, benefac- 
tors have learned to perpetuate themselves as corporations. 
And we now have institutions chartered by acts of congress to 
disburse for educational purposes the charities of millionaires. 
The rich philanthropist, who objectifies himself in such a 
benevolent corporation, of course names the trustees; and 
subsequent vacancies in the board are filled by co-optation. 
This is a new species of corporation; but the two or three 
already organized hold large funds, which are likely to be 
greatly augmented in the future. And there is no limit to the 
number of such corporations except the limit to the number 
of persons who possess wealth and desire to distribute it in this 
fashion. 

A corporation of this kind is a distributing agency for wealth 
set apart for educational purposes. It can make investigations 
into applications which the rich philanthropist has not the 
time even to read. It can consider the circumstances of 
institutions and determine which in the public interest should 
be fostered and which should be left to languish and die among 

14 



the throng that has been created by the vanity of individuals 
or the ambition and rivalry of religious sects or civil com- 
munities. It can also raise the tone of education in an institu- 
tion by making its gifts dependent on the attainment of certain 
standards. It may make appropriations for research or 
provide salaries for the support of professors of extraordinary 
ability either as investigators or as teachers. It may provide 
pensions for professors who are old or disabled. It may found 
scholarships for the education of talented youths who are to 
become teachers in the secondary schools. It may do anything 
and everything that tends to create an efficient system of state 
or national education. 

It is a large field which is open to these corporate organiza- 
tions of educational beneficence. Where the public schools 
are concerned, the trustees of the corporation undoubtedly 
work in harmony with (and perhaps under the supervision of) the 
educational authorities of the state. As to the state universities 
I believe these corporations have had no relation with them 
except that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of 
Teaching has admitted them to the benefits of its professorial 
pension fund. The work and influence of these benevolent 
organizations essentially exhausts itself on the privately 
endowed and the denominational colleges and universities. 

DANGER TO UNIVERSITY INDEPENDENCE. 
I cannot but think that they create a new and dangerous 
situation for the independent and privately endowed uni- 
versities. Just in proportion as these are supported by those 
benevolent corporations is their centre of gravity thrown outside 
themselves. It is no longer the case of a rich man giving his 
money, going his way (eventually dying), and leaving the 
university free to manage its own affairs. The purse strings 
are now controlled by an immortal power, which makes it its 
business to investigate and supervise and which lays down 
conditions that the university must accept if it is to receive 

15 



grants of money. An irresponsible, self-perpetuating board, 
whose business is to dispense money, necessarily tends to look 
at every question from the pecuniary point of view; it wants 
its money's worth ; it demands immediate and tangible results. 
Will not its large powers and enormous influence in relation to 
the institutions dependent upon it tend to develop in it an 
attitude of patronage and. a habit of meddling? The very 
ambition of such a corporation to reform educational abuses 
is itself a source of danger. Men are not constituted educational 
reformers by having millions to spend. And, indeed, an 
irresponsible, self -perpetuating board of this sort may become 
a real menace to the best interests of the higher education. 
In the fancied interests of capital, of religion, or of education 
itself, it may galvanize the intellectual life of the institution it 
undertakes to foster. A board of this kind should be answer- 
able to the public, like the regents of a state university. Or, 
better still, let the millionaire trust the boards of trustees of 
colleges and universities and give them outright the capital he 
intends to devote to educational purposes. I believe that in 
all cases this plan would be best for education and best for the 
public interest. I make no exception even of the Carnegie 
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to which Mr. 
Carnegie has given such large endowment for the pensioning of 
professors in the colleges, technical schools, and universities of 
the United States and Canada. And I certainly speak with no 
prejudice as I regard that endowment as the best thing any 
benefactor has ever done for higher education in America, 
and I have myself the honor of being one of the trustees. But 
I look with concern and anxiety on the influence of such corpora- 
tions on the free and independent life of our institutions of 
learning and research. 

GOVERNMENT OF ENDOWED UNIVERSITIES. 
Privately endowed universities are governed by boards of 
trustees who as a rule elect their own members. Some of them 

16 



make provision also for alumni representation on the board. 
In the main, however, they are self-perpetuating corporations. 
A board so constituted tends to develop a uniform complexion. 
It is composed of the same type of men, selected from the same 
class of society, having the same intellectual outlook and 
interests. They will be lawyers, or doctors, or educated men of 
business. No farmer, no labor man will have a seat on the 
board, though the farm and the factory have scientific interests 
and there are farmers and wage-earners who are wise councilors 
and prudent administrators. In comparison with the governing 
board of a state university, the governing board of an endowed 
university^ may be described as lacking comprehensiveness of 
outlook and interest. The one board represents the people 
of the state, and takes account of the intellectual life and the 
scientific problems of all the people ; the other at best represents 
a portion of the people and a section of their intellectual 
interests. This is not saying that the governing board of an 
endowed university may not have as able and devoted members 
as the regents of a state university. They may be more able 
and more devoted. But the governing board of the state 
university has the great advantage of representing the people 
of the state, whose diversified, intellectual interests it appre- 
ciates and serves, while the governing board of the endowed 
university has no such representative character or comprehen- 
sive function. 

Apart from this limitation, however, the trustees of the 
endowed university, who are selected by co-optation or by vote 
of the alumni, ordinarily make excellent public servants. The 
mode of selection tends to secure picked men. And as they 
are generally re-elected on the expiration of their term of 
office, they become the depositories of a valuable experience 
and the exponents of a practical wisdom begotten of such 
experience. Those of them who are elected by the alumni are 
apt to have also a special understanding of the educational 

17 



and scientific work of the university. Altogether I should say 
that so long as we have endowed universities of the character 
of our oldest seats of learning, so long will they be governed by 
boards whose members are chosen by co-optation or by vote 
of the alumni. 

CORNELL UNIVERSITY BOARD. 

Hitherto we have had no university governed by a board 
whose membership was determined by all three methods of 
selection — by state appointment, by the vote of the alumni, 
and by the choice of the board itself. Last winter, however, 
the legislature of the State of New York amended the charter 
of Cornell University, with the full approval of the board of 
trustees, so as to provide for such a constitution of the board. 
Cornell University was, I believe, the first university in America 
to give representation to the alumni on the board of trustees. 
Hitherto of six trustees elected annually for a term of five 
years two have been elected by the alumni and four by the 
board. The act just referred to, while leaving the governor and 
other high state officers trustees of the university ex-ofjicio, 
provides that one of the trustees hitherto elected annually by 
the board shall hereafter be appointed by the governor of the 
state with the advice and consent of the senate. The next 
step may be to have two of the six trustees appointed annually 
by the governor with the advice and consent of the senate, 
leaving two to be elected by the board and two, as now, to be 
chosen by the alumni; and eventually the State might claim 
even a still larger measure of control. In the meantime, 
however, there will be opportunity to see how the scheme 
works. It is certainly an interesting departure, and, as I think, 
a very hopeful one. And it responds to the actual situation at 
Cornell University. For the State of New York, which less 
than twenty years ago had never given a cent to Cornell Uni- 
versity, now makes large and increasing appropriation for the 

18 



maintenance of its educational work; and with this State 
participation in the support of the University should go State 
participation in its administration and control. 

UNIVERSITY SERVICE TO STATE. 

A university which has an organic connection with the state 
possesses not only the advantage of state support. It has the 
privilege and the duty of serving the state. Of course its 
service is rigidly limited to the educational, scholarly, and 
scientific interests of the state. But in these days those 
interests are very extensive and very diversified. One of the 
most important is the provision of teachers for the high schools 
and normal schools of the state. This function is likely to 
increase in importance with every passing year. Our secondary 
and elementary schools are inferior to similar schools in France 
and Germany. To make them more thorough and efficient we 
need better teachers. There is no other remedy. And better 
teachers will be demanded, just as soon as communities discover 
that this is the only way to reform. These teachers must for 
the high schools be furnished by the universities. And a state 
university, which is the crown and climax of the educational 
system of the state, has in these circumstances a unique 
opportunity and privilege which any privately endowed 
university must envy. Even the privately endowed univer- 
sity, however, may share in this splendid work. And it is its 
misfortune — I will not say its fault — if among its graduates 
there is not a considerable number who intend to devote them- 
selves to the teaching profession. Certainly there is an obliga- 
tion incumbent on the state universities to educate teachers for 
the schools and to create and intensify enthusiasm for the 
teaching profession. From the point of view of the public, 
this is quite as important as graduating lawyers, physicians, 
or clergymen. 

But a state university will not content itself with any object 
short of the entirety of educational, scholarly, and scientific 

19 



interests of the state. It has in this respect an advantage over 
the privately endowed university — an advantage reflected in 
the constitution of the governing board, to which I have already 
referred. The scope of the privately endowed university is 
narrower, its programme less diversified, than that of the 
state university. It is in the state universities that the scientific 
and intellectual interests of the community are reflected in 
their entirety. As these universities are dependent on the 
people as a whole for their support they are sensitive to the 
intellectual needs of the people wherever and whenever they 
arise. There is no work, no calling, no human activity too 
humble for their consideration, if only science or knowledge 
can be of use in it. On the other hand as the people support 
the university no section of the community will tolerate the 
neglect of its peculiar problems. Hence it is that the state 
universities have such a multiplicity of departments and 
comprehensiveness of curriculum. Their province is the 
totality of human knowledge and its application to the life 
and work and vocations of mankind. Agriculture is cultivated 
side by side with law and the mechanic arts with medicine. 
The action and reaction of a university and the people of the 
state upon each other is mutually advantageous. Of course 
the people are aided and elevated by knowledge. But it is 
also an advantage to the university to be kept in close touch 
with concrete scientific problems and with knowledge that is 
useful; the university is thereby saved from scholasticism and 
barrenness. It may be said that this work is utilitarian. But 
if so, it is utilitarianism which is characterized by intellectual 
service to mankind. A more serious objection would be that 
this activity of the university in practical spheres might atrophy 
the wings of reason and keep it from soaring into the heights 
of speculation. That, however, is an indictment which De 
Tocqueville brought against American democracy before the 
state university came into existence. And it should be noticed 

20 



that the activity which the state universities exhibit in practical 
affairs, like farming and engineering, is itself a theoretical and 
rational activity. And I see no reason why facts concerning 
crops, stock, railways, and factories should not be as stimulating 
to pure reason as any other groups of facts. Certainly Darwin, 
the greatest scientific speculator since Newton, took as the 
starting-point of his theories the data gathered by gardeners 
and stock-breeders. 

STATE UNIVERSITIES AND DEMOCRACY. 

The attitude of our people towards their state universities 
is a sublime and encouraging spectacle. It is, however, as wise 
and far-sighted as it is touching and impressive. For the Hfe 
of states, like the life of individuals, is dependent on foresight, 
and foresight is the counterpart of that exact and systematic 
knowledge which we call Science, of which the university is the 
organ and work-shop. The best guides and the chief helpers 
of the community are not the poHticians and financiers, who 
fill the public eye, but the scholars and the scientists. The 
universities are to a nation what eyes are to an animal. And 
since in our Republic the federal government has nothing to 
do with education it devolves on the states to supply the univer- 
sities. Their origin and support can no longer in the United 
States be left to the caprice and uncertainty of private 
generosity, helpful as that generosity may be. Education 
from the elementary school to the university is the concern of 
the state. The majority of our states have recognized this 
obHgation and provided state universities. The West has led, 
but the East is following. And before many years a state 
without a state university will be an anomaly in our Union. 
For the rest I assert|most emphatically that a state university 
is an indispensable organ of genuine democracy. 

I turn now from the organization and control of universities 
to their members and functions. 

21 



WORK OF AMERICAN PROFESSORS. 

The professors in American universities have a pedagogical 
function to discharge which in Europe falls to the teachers in 
the gymnasium or the lycee. This is not their only function, 
but it is an addition to their other duties, which resemble those 
of German or French university professors. The difference 
is due to the inferiority of our high schools when compared with 
the secondary schools of the most advanced countries in 
Europe. In the latter the period of drill on the part of the 
teacher and of assimilative intellectual reaction and discipline 
on the part of the scholar are completed before the boys pass 
their leaving examinations and qualify for admission to the 
university. With us in the United States boys do not reach 
this stage much before the close of the second year in the uni- 
versity. The work, therefore, of the professors of the liberal 
arts and sciences in our universities is during the freshman and 
sophomore years essentially the drill-work of the German 
gymnasium. I have said this is what the work is; it would be 
more correct to say this is what the work ought to he. For many 
of our professors, who have been trained in German universities, 
fail to recognize the actual condition of affairs at home, and 
lecture to callow and untrained freshmen, or even introduce 
them into methods of original research, as though they already 
possessed a knowledge to which they are strangers or a mental 
discipline which they have had no opportunity of acquiring. 
I consider it a matter of cardinal importance in the higher 
education of the United States that this National Association 
of State Universities has drawn a sharp distinction between 
the work of the freshman and sophomore years and the sub- 
sequent work of our university students. 

BETTER TEACHING DEMANDED. 
Two other steps, however, remain to be taken in the interests 
of higher education. First the individual universities of this 

22 



Association must see that their freshmen and sophomores are 
thoroughly drilled — drilled as they were in former days by 
those inexorable teachers of mathematics and Latin or Greek. 
This is the remedy for the atrocious intellectual slovenliness, 
inaccuracy, and vagueness which today characterize pupils 
in all American schools, colleges, and universities. As in so 
many other cases reform must begin from above; it is for the 
universities to react on the high schools and normal schools 
and through them on the elementary schools. And it is in 
the freshman and sophomore years that the university has the 
opportunity and the duty of performing this high task and 
setting the shining example. Especially is the obUgation in- 
cumbent on the universities embraced in this Association which 
has already formally recognized that the work of the first two 
years differs in aini and method from that of the subsequent 
years of the student's course, being a continuation of the drill 
work of the preparatory school with a beginning if possible of 
the freely determined activity of the scholar and investigator. 

CURRICULUM FOR UNDER-CLASSMEN. 
The second task to which not only the individual univer- 
sities but especially this National Association of State Univer- 
sities must address themselves is the establishment of a 
curriculum for freshmen and sophomores in place of the old 
New England curriculum which has gone and the no-curriculum 
of the elective system which experience has proved a worse 
substitute. I regard this matter as one of the most urgent 
problems now before our universities. It cannot be settled for 
the Nation by any one institution, but it can, I believe, be 
settled by this Association representing the universities of the 
several states. What we do in this matter, if we can reach a 
unanimous conclusion, would, I have little doubt, be adopted 
by the Nation. And think what vast interests are involved. 
It is nothing less than the displacement of the chaos which now 
reigns supreme, not only in our universities and colleges, but 

23 



in our high schools and academies by a curriculum of study 
based on sound pedagogical principles and adapted to the 
spirit and needs of twentieth century civilization. I admit 
that tne task is one of colossal difficulty. But that is no reason 
why it should not be undertaken. Difficulties exist to try the 
spirit of men. 

The general indifference of the faculties of our universities 
to this problem is due, I believe, to that exclusive absorption 
in departmental interests which the elective system has de- 
veloped amongst us. The professor tends to look at all 
educational questions from the point of view of his own subject, 
his own classes, his own laboratory or seminary. A visitor 
from Mars investigating our universities might suspect that 
students existed for the sake of the professor's specialty. What 
studies are best for the student and at what age, are themes 
seldom discussed and rarely thought of. Yet, in spite of 
research and in spite of service to the community, it is still 
true that universities exist for the sake of students. And the 
time has come for a reaction in favor of the student's interests. 
We must face and settle the question what subjects should be 
studied by freshmen and sophomores who according to the 
formal declaration of this Association cannot, like upperclass- 
men and graduates, be left free to elect their own courses and to 
engage in specialization or investigation. 

SUBJECTS SUGGESTED. 

If the problem were once seriously faced, it might turn out 
that there would be much more probability of agreement than 
could haxe existed some years ago, prior to experience with 
the elective system. Some things have in the meantime 
settled themselves. Greek, for instance, will never again 
be prescribed in American universities ; for general educational 
purposes (while its incomparable literature will always have 
audience fit though few) it has gone the way of Hebrew, which 
like Greek, was once prescribed for the A. B. degree. In a 

24 



generation, a century, or a millenium, Latin may follow it; 
but at present Latin is a potent and widely diffused factor in 
our civilization. It is an accident that two foreign languages 
have so long been prescribed for educated men. Shall we in 
the future have only one? I suppose most persons would say 
at least one foreign language was necessary, holding with 
Goethe that the man who knows only his own language does 
not know even that. Shall the foreign language be Latin, or 
German, or French, or Spanish? In Europe practical 
necessities — trade, travel, intercourse, etc. — foster the ac- 
quisition of foreign languages. These considerations would 
with us give the preference to German and Spanish. Yet our 
graduates, who are to become scholars and scientists, will 
continue to need German and French as the tools of their 
vocation. 

Probably every one will assent to the proposition that the 
English language and literature and our own national history 
should be the centre of humanistic studies of the high school 
and that they should be continued in the freshman and sopho- 
more years of the university. Nor would there perhaps be 
much difference of opinion about the place to be occupied by 
mathematics. The war against science is over ; and the value 
of science as educational material is fully recognized, even 
though few educators, if any, would, like Herbert Spencer, 
make it the be-all and end-all of education. 

But if courses in Enghsh language and Hterature, in history 
and pontics, in Latin or German or both, in mathematics and 
physical science, were laid out for freshmen and sophomores, 
and taught by methods of instruction adapted to freshmen and 
sophomores and by professors distinguished for pedagogical 
skill and thoroughness and possessed of personalities with a 
contagious power of sympathy, friendship, and inspiration, — 
what a reform would be effected in our higher education and 
how quickly it would spread through all grades of our institu- 
tions of learning ! 

25 



TEACHERS AND INVESTIGATORS. 

The all-essential factor in this reform is the teacher. Our 
universities, and especially the state universities, have in 
recent years been over-run with students; and the problem of 
providing for their instruction has not yet been satisfactorily 
solved. The embarrassment is felt most in the underclasses, 
in which the augmentation of members is especially marked. 
Generally, this increasing demand for instruction has been 
met by dividing the classes into sections and assigning the 
sections to tutors or instructors. Thus it results that young 
students who need the best teaching an institution can command 
are turned over to inexperienced young men, fresh from the 
laboratory and seminary, interested in research, and begrudging 
the time taken from it by what they feel the drudgery of 
teaching and drilling pupils ignorant of the very elements of 
the subject in which they themselves live and move and have 
their being. Now this situation illustrates the need of two 
classes of university professors, — the one preeminent as 
teachers the other as investigators, though of course the teachers 
should not neglect scholarship and research nor the investigators 
be exempt from the duty, of teaching. So long as our American 
universities retain the work now done in the freshman and 
sophomore years — and I see very little prospect of our public 
high schools being able to undertake it — so long must they 
have in their faculties professors who are teachers, drillmasters, 
and inspirers of youth as well as professors who are investigators 
and enlargers of knowledge. It is no use shutting our eyes to 
actual facts because we wish them otherwise. The German 
university professor is not the intellectual guide needed by our 
freshmen and sophomores; it is rather the teacher in the 
German Gynmasium. And it is the duty of our universities, 
and especially of the state universities which have differentiated 
so markedly the work of the freshman and sophomore years and 
the later years of the course, to provide their underclassmen 

26 



with the kind of teachers they actually need. And we must 
see to it that in dignity, in emolument, and in public esteem 
the cultured and inspiring teacher of underclassmen shall 
enjoy equal standing with the specialist and investigator whose 
dearest ambition is, not so much the training of youth, as the 
enlargement of knowledge. 

The other reform needed in the faculties of our universities 
has to do with research and investigation. My complaint is 
that we do not today sufficiently differentiate the functions 
which our universities are discharging. We are apparently 
willing that everybody should do everything. But the ideal 
surely is that the work to be done should be done by those who 
are competent to do it, and on the other hand that each should' 
do the work for which he is peculiarly fitted. Our universities 
are devoted to teaching and to investigation. These functions 
will not be properly discharged if the man whom nature ordained 
for the high function of teaching is kept in the laboratory or 
the man who has a thirst for new knowledge and might create 
it is exhausted in the classroom. I have already said that our 
underclassmen are entitled to better teachers. Teaching is 
the primary and fundamental function of the university; and 
the good teacher is second to no other member of the faculty. 
But research has in modern times come to be an important 
function of the university, and it becomes more important 
with every passing year. The scientist and scholar who 
explore for us the secrets of nature or the history of mankind 
have come to be recognized as the chief benefactors of our race. 
Human life is a struggle and a process of adaptation ; we succeed 
in living in proportion as we know ourselves and the environ- 
ment that conditions us. The light to our feet and the lamp 
to our path is that exact and systematized knowledge we call 
science, by the aid of which we recall the past, predict the 
future, and make ourselves at home with the forces of the 
universe. 

27 



APPEAL FOR RESEARCH PROFESSORS. 

Research is a highly speciaHzed function. It is not the 
calUng of every university professor, though experience in 
interrogating nature even when she makes no reply may be a 
good discipline for every educated man. But research as a 
vocation is the privilege of the few who are specially qualified 
for that creative function. In an ideally organized university 
a profesor thus endowed by nature would be set apart to his 
high calling. The experience of European universities seems 
to show, however, that it helps, rather than hinders, the in- 
vestigator, if he also does some teaching. I cite the cases of 
Kelvin, of Helmholtz, of Pasteur. The trouble with us in 
America is that we overwhelm the investigator with teaching. 
His energies are exhausted in the classroom; and when he 
escapes to his laboratory no inspiration comes to his wearied 
faculties. We are ready, especially in the state universities, 
to build him laboratories and to buy him apparatus, and even 
to furnish him with assistance. We have yet to learn that 
research demands the man himself, in all the freshness and 
plenitude of his energies. And the next step in the develop- 
ment of our universities will be the establishment of research 
professorships, in connection with which teaching will be a 
subordinate and ancillary function. Such chairs already 
exist in some of our agricultural departments and in one at 
least of our medical schools. They will eventually be established 
in all the great fields of scientific inquiry. And when they 
come it will be for us to see that none shall occupy them but 
professors having the genuine afflatus of scientific discovery— 
knight-errants of the holy spirit of truth. A score of such 
professorships in each of a dozen of the strongest universities 
in the United States would do more than any other reform 
whatever to put American universities on the same plane as 
those of Germany. But 250 research professors at a salary of 
$8,000 would call for only $2,000,000 a year, and if to that be 

28 



added another $2,000,000 for assistants and facilities for 
research, the total would not exceed $4,000,000 a year. This 
is a small sum for a nation so rich as ours to spend on any 
special object and a mere bagatelle for it to invest in the develop- 
ment of brains and the discovery of knowledge which have 
always constituted true national greatness and which nowadays 
also infallibly produce national prosperity and efficiency. 
In the name of science and in the name of statesmanship I 
appeal to our millionaires and to our legislatures to inaugurate 
this sublime and fruitful work of scientific research on a scale 
worthy of our great and rich republic. We hear it stated with 
somewhat tiresome monotony that the United States has at 
last become a "world-power." Well, as Bacon said, knowledge 
is power. And the only genuine way to become a world-power 
is to rival the foremost nations of the world in the discovery of 
new knowledge. This the United States cannot do till its 
universities become active centres of original investigation like 
the universities of Germany. And for this development of 
our universities professorships devoted to research — and a 
goodly number of them — are the indispensable condition. 

FREE TUITION FOR STUDENTS. 
I come now to the students of our universities. Their num- 
bers in recent years have been greatly increased. In part this 
is due to the general diffusion of prosperity throughout the 
country, which has provided funds available for the higher 
education of young men and women, and in part to the in- 
expensiveness of education at the state universities, in which 
no charge is made for tuition. I believe that in a democracy 
the highest education like the lowest should be accessible to 
all classes of the people, without money and without price. 
The laws governing the bequest and inheritance of property 
inevitably tend to create an aristocracy of wealth. It is all 
the more imperative, therefore, that we should fight every 
policy and arrangement which tends to develop an aristocracy 

29 



of intellect supported by, and allied with, that aristocracy of 
wealth. But every dollar charged for higher education makes 
for the development and consideration of such an alliance. It 
is not free choice, it is the necessity laid upon them, which has 
led the privately endowed universities to make a charge for 
tuition (apart altogether from laboratory and other fees) of 
from $100 to $250 a year. These universities must have 
funds to do their work, and if gifts and legacies are wanting 
there is no other source of revenue but receipts from students. 
I recognize the necessity. But it is none the less deplorable 
and calamitous. For these high fees are barriers which the 
privately endowed universities set up against students who 
have little or no means to spend on education. By this policy 
those universities tend to limit their services to certain classes 
of the community — to the rich, prosperous, or well-to-do. 
They establish an artificial selection of students by standards 
which are neither educational nor intellectual, but purely 
pecuniary. 
* Of course the tendency I am describing may to some extent 
be overcome by loan-funds, scholarships, and the like. But 
the amount of this aid for students is quite limited; and if 
it is given the student feels himself an object of charity, while 
if it is lent he has the obligation to repay it at a later time. 
Altogether it is a very inadequate and very unsatisfactory 
substitute for the free tuition which prevails at the state 
universities. Of course it will be said by the prosperous 
optimist that if a young man wants a college education he 
should pay for it and if he is of the "right stuff" he will not 
fail in his ambition. But the first contention is undermined 
by the practice of our elementary and high schools which give 
free education; and it is not possible in this respect to draw a 
line between them and the universities. And as to the 
possibility of poor youth of ability and ambition earning money 
to pay tuition fees it would be more correct to say that while 

30 



some can and will others cannot and for all it substantially 
increases the difficulty of obtaining a higher education. 

But this is not a matter of mere individual gain or loss. It 
is an issue of vast social and national significance. Society 
is profoundly concerned in the education and training of its 
most highly endowed members. The progress of our nation 
depends upon the educated brains of individuals. We must 
discover our most richly gifted youth and give them all the 
training our universities can offer. To this end we should 
make their access to the universities as easy as possible. The 
state universities smooth their way; the high charges for 
tuition are so many barriers about the privately endowed 
universities. The state universities are, therefore, not merely 
more democratic than the privately endowed universities, they 
will also prove more fruitful agencies for maintaining the 
intellectual vitality and promoting the intellectual progress of 
the American people. 

HIGH STANDARDS AND HARD WORK. 

The privilege of free tuition which the tax-payers bestow 
upon students in the state universities imposes a corresponding 
obligation upon the students and upon the universities. The 
purpose of this provision is the higher education of the best 
minds of the rising generation. The university is not intended 
for persons deficient in brains nor yet for persons who, though 
well endowed mentally, refuse to devote themselves to study. 
The university is a place of study for capable and diligent 
students. And the authorities of a state university, for which 
the public tax themselves to maintain free tuition, are under 
"special obligation to realize this ideal. Laxness in the enforce- 
ment of intellectual and scholastic standards in a state univer- 
sity is especially unpardonable. Even when the tax-payers 
themselves think of numbers rather than of standards, the 
faculty of the university must not be seduced from the plain 

31 



path of duty by that delusion. And students, who are the 
objects of so much pubHc sacrifice, are under special obligation 
to do their duty, to make the most of the high privilege con- 
ferred upon them, and to fit themselves to become intellectual 
guides and leaders of the community. 

I believe that the hardest working students in America are 
today found in the universities embraced in this Association. 
The prestige of our venerable endowed universities attracts 
to them, not only workers, but idlers — the youth sent by 
ambitious parents for social purposes rather than for study or 
education. This influx of young men, who are averse to 
intellectual work and contemptuous of the scholarly life, creates 
special problems for the universities which they frequent. 
Whether the state universities will in the future attract a similar 
class of students I do not venture to predict. Today they 
certainly do not. Of course the prestige of the old universities 
enures to the advantage of the state universities. But the 
migration of the drones is not the only reason why their students 
are hard workers. These young men and women come from 
homes in the country and in small villages where the higher 
education is greatly appreciated, partly no doubt because of 
its rarity. Then the university offers them the sort of education 
they want for their work in life, so that their interests are 
enlisted at the outset. Every calling which has an intellectual 
or scientific basis is represented in the faculty of the university. 
It is a great democratic nursery of future farmers, mechanics, 
engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, clergymen, writers, 
scholars, and scientists. And, speaking generally, each student 
devotes himself to his own field of work with the zeal and 
earnestness which are to characterize him in his subsequent 
vocation. 

OUTSIDE DISTRACTIONS. 

There is, however, one qualification to be made to this general 
statement. If our state universities are attended by serious- 

32 



minded, hard-workiiig students, it must be admitted that for 
the sake of the so-called "student activities" they will at 
special seasons sacrifice the studies of the curriculum almost as 
readily, if not as generally, as the students of the famous old 
endowed universities. These extra-curriculum activities have 
become in the last decade or two a serious menace to the real 
functions of our universities, state and endov/ed alike. In 
themselves considered these so-called "student activities" are 
proper and it may be even laudable. They embrace football, 
baseball, rowing, and track athletics, besides basketball, tennis, 
golf, cross-country running, fencing, and other minor sports. 
But the students' extraneous activities are not limited to 
athletics; they extend beyond the physical nature of man; 
they are exerted in journahsm and music and the dram.a, in 
pontics and morals and rehgion, in receptions and dances and 
celebrations and other social functions innumerable. For all 
these objects, as varied as the interests of hum.an life, there 
are organizations to be formed and maintained, meetings 
to be held, business to be conducted, service often heavy and 
long-continued to be performed by adepts, and exhibitions to 
be given not only at home but in other places often hundreds 
of miles away. 

I need not point out, though the fact escapes general attention 
save in the case of football, that these outside activities absorb 
the time and interests of the students who participate in them 
to the detriment of that intellectual training and education 
for the sake of which they presumably came to the university. 
It is no relief to the situation to point out that such students 
derive a valuable experience from these non-academic pursuits. 
Undoubtedly they do. But the university does not exist for 
the sake of the "side-shows" that can be grouped about its 
hospitable campus. They are mere phenomena or even epi- 
phenomena that play about that vital and essential reality 
which we call the university. To substitute them for it is 
to glorify the shadow as the substance. 

33 



The university is an institution for the training of mind 
through intellectual discipline by competent masters. If the 
university does not serve this function I see little use in pre- 
serving the institution. As a mere centre and occasion of non- 
academic "student activities," it would exhibit a monstrous 
perversion of ends, to say nothing of monumental folly and 
wastefulness. The work to which the university is called is 
the highest and noblest known to modern civilization. Optimi 
corruptio pessima. We must hold our universities up to their 
high ideal. And the task, once the danger that threatens them 
is fully realized, is not so difficult as it appears. All that is 
needed is the establishment of high educational standards and 
the enforcement of these requirements on all classes of students. 
lyCt the youth by all means have his physical and social recrea- 
tion; for physical and social recreation is essential to his well- 
being and to freshness and vigor of mind ; but let him practice 
the Hellenic precept of moderation, and let him subordinate 
everything else to that intellectual discipline and education 
for the sake of which the true student comes to the university 
and for the sake of which alone the university exists. 

THE STUDENT HERO. 
Is our ideal then of the student to be that entity whom his 
comrades, with significant and tell-tale opprobrium, designate 
the "grind" or even the "greasy grind"? This question is a 
real challenge to the faculties of our universities. The students 
make a hero of the man who excels in non-academic "student 
activities," especially in athletics. Who is our hero? Have 
we none? Or does it seem a matter of no' moment? Shall the 
athlete, or the singer, or the player be thrust into the place of 
honor by his admiring fellow-students while their teachers 
maintain an approving silence? Has not the time come to 
proclaim that the able and hard-working student — he is the hero 
of the university. For a hundred gifted youth who strenuously 
devote themselves to their studies our universities might well 

34 



spare a thousand mediocre men, good fellows though the)^ be, 
to whom study is a weariness of the flesh and distinction in 
"student activities" the be-all and end-all of the college course. 
I believe the time is ripe for a formal recognition of high 
scholarship on the part of our faculties. At Oxford and 
Cambridge students are divided into "pass" and "honor" men, 
the former numbered by thousands, the latter by hundreds. And 
in Germany a radical distinction is made between the pass 
degree and the degree magna cuin laude or summa cum laude, 
the latter of which is obtained by only a small number of 
graduates. To these distinguished graduates the best things 
are open both in Germany and in Britain. With us in the 
United States, speaking generally, all degrees of the same 
denomination conferred by a university have the same value. 
The result is that our degrees are held in Httle esteem by the 
public. Could we not reinstate them in public estimation and 
at the same time invest our real scholars with appropriate 
honors by making some such distinction between our students 
as that connoted by "pass" and "honor" men in the old 
universities of England? And would not this change lead to 
a further differentiation in the work of our faculties, which 
today is one of the greatest needs of our universities? 
Qualitative differences exist between students; let them be 
frankly recognized, and the work adjusted accordingly — 
and the honors, too. 

LIBERAL CULTURE. 
So far I have treated the university as a single unit. "What 
I have been saying appHes to the institution as a whole, though 
some remarks may be more applicable to one division of it 
than to others. I desire at this point, however, to separate 
for special consideration the college of liberal arts. The 
successful work of the professional, technical, and vocational 
schools in our best universities is now universally recognized. 
But the indictment is brought against those same universities, 

35 



and especially the state universities, that they have not been 
successful organs of liberal culture. This is the end to which 
the old-fashioned New England college directed its energies. 
The means it employed was the use of a restricted circle of 
studies which, it is claimed, were without practical bearing, 
which neither fitted young men to earn their livelihood or to 
practice a profession. These studies were called "liberal," 
to mark them off from practical or useful subjects. And the 
capable student who pursued them assiduously reached that 
intangible but real goal known as liberal culture. In the 
best sense of the term, he was a liberally educated man. He 
was steeped in the best thought and culture of his time; and 
not only was his reason trained, but his imagination had been 
quickened and his taste elevated and refined. 

The disciplines which produced this result were the Greek 
and Latin languages and literatures, mathematics, physics, 
rhetoric, logic, and philosophy. There may have been some 
other minor subjects, but these were the staple of that old 
curriculum. As will be seen it consisted of literature, science, 
and philosophy. The emphasis was laid on literature, the 
lightest stress was put on science. 

Now in connection with that programme and its results two 
observations must be made. In the first place the college 
course, in spite of all that has been said regarding its practical 
uselessness, was an excellent preparation for the two great 
learned professions of the day — namely, the professions of 
theology and law, in which literary, rhetorical, and argumenta- 
tive training was then of fundamental importance; and the 
student who had completed the course could earn a livelihood 
by teaching school while he prepared himself, wholly or in 
part, to enter one of those professions. Again, if the curriculum 
of a modern college of liberal arts does not give to literature 
the preponderance which it held in the older scheme of studies, 
it nevertheless gives ample place to other important humanistic 

36 



studies, such as history, economics, and politics. And it 
provides more generously for physical science, which by its 
insistence on fact and verified theory has created for our 
generation a new type of intellectual civiHzation. 

CHANGES IN THE COLLEGE. 

Let us frankly admit that the college of liberal arts, whether 
as a division in the university or a separate organization, has 
been undergoing modification. It has been adjusting itself to 
modern civilization. If it lays less stress than formerly on a 
knowledge of the languages of ancient peoples — Hebrew, 
Greek, and even lyatin — it lays far more stress on a knowledge 
of their history, institutions, ideas, and economical and political 
conditions and development. It recognizes, too, that the life 
and work of mankind did not cease to be interesting or in- 
structive with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. 
And especially does it find in our own national history and 
institutions and in the literature of our mother tongue 
educational material of the highest value, for which it may 
cite the warrant of the ancient Greeks, our exemplars of liberal 
culture, who knew no language, literature, and history but 
their own and even contemned everything foreign as barbarian. 
And then, as I have already intimated, a college of liberal arts 
would today be exceedingly illiberal which did not give its 
students some training in the methods and results of physical 
science, which, apart from its own specific achievements, has 
so profoundly modified our views, if not of man's nature, at 
any rate of his place in the universe and the course of his history 
on this planet. Lastly, the college of liberal arts today makes 
more of the fine arts — of music, painting, sculpture, and 
architecture — than at any previous period of its history. 

There has been in our universities, state as well as endowed, 
a great increase in the number of liberal studies and some 
change of emphasis in their relative importance, but they remain 

37 



as of old, primarily, the humanities, and secondarily, the 
sciences. And our universities, state as well as endowed, 
recognize with the college of arts that the minds of the rising 
generation are to be humanized (and so liberalized) by a study 
of the humanities — the rational, spiritual, imaginative, moral, 
political, and institutional productions and creations of the 
human race. These embrace language, literature, art, 
philosophy, history, economics, and politics. To these must be 
added physical science, which is man's verified insight into 
the nature and operations of this material universe, which is 
the scene of his existence, the source of his physical energies, 
and, mayhap, the living garment of the Infinite Spirit, in whom 
he lives and moves and has his being. 

THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

Is it worth while to pursue art, literature, philosophy, and 
science for their own sake, or apart from their usefulness 
in earning a hvelihood, making money, or rising in a profession? 
It is not, if man is in this world merely to eat, drink, gather 
wealth, and try to get his head above his fellows. It assuredly 
is worth while — and this is the creed of all colleges and univer- 
sities alike — if man is summoned to truth and beauty by voices 
nobler and not less commanding than those which bid him 
eat and drink and gratify his animal instincts. Disinterested 
devotion to truth and beauty, like unselfish goodness, rests on 
the final postulate that we are not on earth merely for the 
sake of living, but for the sake of noble Hving. This high 
conception of man is the meeting point of liberal culture with 
virtue and religion. And none of them can escape the shadow 
cast by the reaUstic aims of an age that worships money and 
physical power as they have not been worshipped since the 
days of the Roman Empire. All the more incumbent on our 
universities is it to foster the intellectual life and to proclaim 
that the things of the spirit are the real summum bonum both 

38 



for nations and for individuals. A state university which 
allowed its college of liberal arts to languish, which was faithless 
to the call of liberal culture, would have destroyed the nerve 
of its own highest life and activity, while it abandoned the 
most precious heritage of the civilization of mankind. "The 
love of knowledge for its own sake," says Locke, "is the prin- 
cipal part of human perfection, and the seed-plot of all the 
virtues." 



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